Monday, August 31, 2009

Newbusters is keeping the light on the hypocritical, biased coverage of the phony issue of supposed "Nazi/Hitler" comparisons by health bill opponents by, for instance, CNN, that ignores the voluminous examples from the left:

"On Tuesday’s Situation Room, CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux questioned RNC Chairman Michael Steele about the debate over ObamaCare, and alleged that protesters “from your own party…have talked about and compared President Obama to Hitler” at the health care town halls.

"CNN has raised the issue of the Nazi comparisons at the health care town halls in the past weeks, all the while making three significant omissions. First, they neglected to mention that early in August, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the anti-ObamaCare protesters of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on health care,” which led to Rush Limbaugh pointing out the similarities between the DNC health care logo and a Nazi symbol. They have also failed to mention that supporters of leftist Lyndon LaRouche bore posters of President Obama defaced with a Hitler mustache.

"Stoners may be trading sexual highs for the chemical kind. Males who smoke marijuana daily are four times more likely to have trouble reaching orgasm than men who don't inhale, finds a new study of 8,656 Aussies...

And so does the following translate to greater risk of STD's?:"Even though many male smokers experienced sexual problems, they reported more partners than non-smokers. Marijuana users were twice as likely to have had two or more sex partners in the previous year than men who didn't smoke pot."

The young 'uns aren't fired up for the same reason they will not purchase health insurance at prices inflated by so-called "community rating" rules that prohibit charging market rates, meaning different rates, for older vs. younger workers:

"Add this to President Barack Obama's problems in selling his health care overhaul: A lot of the tech-savvy activists who helped put him in office are young, feeling indestructible and not all that into what they see as an old folks issue.

"It's a crucial gap in support and one the White House may have to correct if Obama is to regain the momentum and get Congress to act on his top domestic priority...

"Two tax provisions in the health-care bill voted on by the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this summer have gained significant attention. One would impose a surtax on high-income earners. The other would force individuals (or their employers) who do not have approved health-insurance plans to pay a tax penalty. But there are other "revenue provisions" in the bill that also deserve a close look.

"One would change the law to mandate that the Internal Revenue Service slap penalties on honest but errant taxpayers..."

Saturday, August 29, 2009

"As Allahpundit noted last night, both sides are claiming vindication after the release of CIA documents on enhanced-interrogation techniques long sought by former Vice President Dick Cheney. The memos don’t detail which particular techniques were most effective, but the most “enhanced” of them certainly gets specific recognition for its effectiveness. Waterboarding played a role in loosening the tongues of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, but the CIA was reluctant to specifically claim it as the sole reason for gaining more intel. With Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they had no such reservation (via Power Line and Weekly Standard):

"Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate, or incomplete...Khalid Shaykh Muhammad received 183 applications of the waterboard in March 2003. …

"He provided information that helped lead to the arrests of terrorists including Sayfullah Paracha and his son Uzair Paracha, businessmen who Khalid Shaykh Muhammad planned to use to smuggle explosives into the United States; Saleh Almari, a sleeper operative in New York; and Majid Khan, an operative who could enter the United States easily and was tasked to research attacks [redacted]. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad’s information also led to the investigation and prosecution of Iyman Faris, the truck driver arrested in early 2003 in Ohio..."

"As ObamaCare sinks in the polls, Democrats are complaining that the critics are distorting their proposals. But the truth is that the closer one inspects the actual details, the worse it all looks. Today’s example is the vast debt canyon that would open just beyond the 10-year window under which the bill is officially “scored” for cost purposes...

"The press corps has noticed the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that the House health bill increases the deficit by $239 billion over the next decade. But government-run health care won’t turn into a pumpkin after a decade. The underreported news is the new spending that will continue to increase well beyond the 10-year period that CBO examines, and that this blowout will overwhelm even the House Democrats’ huge tax increases, Medicare spending cuts and other “pay fors.”

" Always nice to see the charming and classy Maxine Waters weigh in on the public debate. Let's see, opponents of ObamaCare have been called Nazis, un-American, evil and now Neanderthals.Keep it up, folks, this is really helping your cause.

Via Meg McCurdle on NY Times article: "Onto the content: "waste, fraud and abuse", that favorite old refrain, will probably not suffice to cut Medicare costs. Fears of "death panels" are way overblown. Fears of "Are second knee replacements worth it?"

"Asked by an audience member why the legislation does nothing to cap medical malpractice class-action lawsuits against doctors and medical institutions (aka "Tort reform"), Dean responded by saying: “The reason tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that’s the plain and simple truth..."

"Two weeks ago, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod said in a now legendary "viral" email that, "It's a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits." This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he'd pay for health-care reform by "eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years" for "what's called Medicare Advantage." And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he'd cover "two-thirds" of the "roughly $900 billion" of his plan's cost by "eliminating waste," again citing Medicare Advantage...

"What's more, according to a White House fact sheet titled "Paying for Health Care Reform," Mr. Axelrod was misleading his readers. It notes the administration would cut $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, with a big chunk coming from Medicare Advantage...

"Already, an estimated 10.2 million seniors—one out of five in America—have enrolled in Medicare Advantage. Mr. Obama is proposing to cut the program by nearly 20% and thus reduce the amount of money each will have to buy insurance. This will likely force most of them to lose the insurance they have now. Yet Mr. Obama promised in late July in New Hampshire that, "if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan."

"— Since his March 2003 capture, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad (KSM), the driving force behind the 11 September attacks as well as several subsequent plots against the US and Western targets worldwide, has become one of the US Government’s key sources on Al-Qa’ida. As a detainee, he has provided [redacted] reports that have shed light on Al-Qa’ida’s strategic doctrine, plots and probable targets, key operatives, and the likely methods for attacks in the US homeland, leading to the disruption of several plots against the United States.

— Information from KSM has not only dramatically expanded our universe of knowledge on Al-Qa’ida’s plots but has provided leads that assisted directly in the capture of other terrorists, including Jemaah Islamiya, leader Hambali...KSM’s plots against the US homeland from late 2001 were opportunistic and limited, including a plot to fly a hijacked plane into the tallest building on the US West Coast and a plan to send Al-Qa’ida operative and US citizen Jose Padilla to set off bombs in high-rise apartment buildings in a US city.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Could Holder do any greater disservice to CIA efforts to protect America and its citizens? From Rep. Hoekstra via NRO:

"At the same time the situation in Afghanistan is getting decidedly worse and the Taliban is advancing, the Obama Justice Department is launching an investigation that risks disrupting CIA counterterrorism initiatives. This is the last thing that should happen when the president is sending more troops into harm’s way, and the nation’s top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, said over the weekend that al-Qaeda still remains a threat to America and our interests abroad.

"Attorney General Holder should know that as he increases the focus on America’s past counterterrorism efforts, he is distracting from the CIA’s current counterterrorism efforts. Having recently been forced to drop cases due to prosecutorial misconduct at DOJ, the attorney general argued that these were rare instances and not part of a broader problem. The same can be said of the CIA, where the agency initiated the investigation, reported cases of misconduct and disciplined the officers involved.

"It was a time when Democratic politicians complained loudly whenever they felt their patriotism was being impugned. In those days, bumper stickers reminded us that “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, declared that disruptive protests were “very American and very important.” Now that protests are directed against a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, Nancy Pelosi thinks such disruptions are “un-American.”

Read the rest, with photos, videos:http://brain-terminal.com/posts/2009/08/20/hitler-comparisons

"According to Ben Smith over at Politico, President Barack Obama gave some theological weight to his health care plan during a phone call to a group of Rabbis the other day. Referring to the belief that God decides during the Jewish New Year “who shall live and who shall die,” Obama told the rebs, “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.”

"In response to this statement I would like to make a subtle theological point: No, we’re not. For those of you who aren’t versed in the finer points of theology, let me try to simplify that for you: No. We’re not. Or to put it even more simply: No. We. Are. Not.

"“All of the proposals that we’re aware of would handle people’s health data that way,” said Larry Pratt, executive director of the group.“And then you end up having a gazillion people lose their gun rights because of some medical record that someone doesn’t like, where they say, ‘Oh, that might be a danger to their self or others.’ No trial, no due process, just gone.”

"The group also objects to Health and Human Services Secretary Katherine Sebelius, saying that she is prone to restrict gun rights.“It wouldn’t be any problem for her to drag up some old discredited study from the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and say, ‘Guns are contagious and they’re a public health menace...

Victor Davis Hanson: "I don't think President Obama will stop his freefall for a while for a variety of reasons...Worse still, his base is now arguing for him to get more partisan, get meaner, get angrier, and get more fired up — also at precisely the time that polls suggest he is falling for already doing just that — and losing his once bipartisan, no-more-red/no-more-blue-state supposed transcendence.

"In truth, as partisans tell Obama to get nasty, his rhetoric the last 90 days has already been exclusively polarizing. The administration and its supporters have ridiculed tea-parties, town-hallers, Republican skepticism about deficits, etc. — evoking everything from Brooks Brothers to the Nazis, from being un-Christian to now getting "wee-weed up."

“The new Post/ABC News poll of 1,001 Americans between Aug. 13-17 shows that only 49% now believe Obama will make the right decisions for the country. That’s down from 60% at the 100-day mark of his presidency.”

Excerpts: "On Monday the Obama administration released a 2004 CIA inspector general's report on the agency's detention and interrogation program. Yesterday, the New York Times reported some gruesome abuses on its front page, above the fold: "Excessive physical force was routinely used, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions, and dozens of other serious injuries over a period of less than two years, a federal investigation has found. . . . [D]espite rules allowing force only as a last resort. 'Staff at the facilities routinely used uncontrolled, unsafe applications of force, departing from generally accepted standards,' said the report."

"Actually, these abuses were not committed by the CIA. They were committed by officials at four juvenile residential detention centers in New York state....

"The decision to prosecute will have a devastating effect on the intelligence community—pushing the agency back into a risk-averse, pre-Sept. 11, 2001, mentality. Indeed, the IG report itself indicates that agency officials knew this day was coming. "One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some 'wanted list' to appear before the World Court. . . . Another said, 'Ten years from now, we're going to be sorry we're doing this . . . [but] it has to be done.'"

"He was right. It had to be done. According to the IG report, "Khalid Sheykh Mohammed, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate, or incomplete." After undergoing the waterboard, however, KSM became "the most prolific" of the detainees in CIA custody. "He provided information that helped lead to the arrests of terrorists including Sayfullah Paracha and his son Uzair Paracha, businessmen whom [KSM] planned to use to smuggle explosives into the United States;..."

"There is something creepy about the sudden invocation of Christian morality by the president to galvanize support for his state-run health care plan, as if his opponents are suddenly to be seen as somehow selfish or even un-Christian...

"1) The moral argument comes at the eleventh hour, rather than the first, of public debate, as if it is a desperate fall-back position intended to shame opponents...

"2) Ironically, the religious trope would argue against the entrance of the state that would relieve citizens of their own moral responsibilities to help out family and friends in times of illness. It is no accident that secularism, agnosticism, and atheism are strongest in socialist Europe...

"3) This contrived use of religiosity (e.g., “There are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness.”) has a Reverend Wright flavor of mixing politics and religion in cynical fashion...

"4) Rather than demonize opponents as callous and disingenuous, all the president has to do to refute their supposed scare tactics is to explicitly assure the public that abortion receives no state funds in his program, that illegal aliens are not included in his proposed new blanket coverage, and that autonomous government panels will not withhold federal health-care coverage, in the case of the elderly, on the basis of perceived cost-benefit considerations..."

"I think we are seeing a sort of presidential meltdown. As Obama's polls free-fall, and threaten wider political damage, it causes him a certain novel exasperation that for the first time in his life soaring hope-and-change rhetoric for some strange reason no longer substitutes for a detailed, logical, and honest agenda."

"To listen to the White House and its supporters in and out of the media, you would think that opposition to “Obamacare” is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole Star Wars cantina of boogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform.

"Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize many with the actions of a few is the simple fact that Obamacare — however defined — has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama’s handling of health care is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority of self-proclaimed independents...

" Focusing on the town halls has its merits, but if you actually want Obamacare to pass, casting a majority of Americans as the stooges of racist goons may not be the best way to go.Imagine if George W. Bush, in his effort to partially privatize Social Security, had insisted that the “time for talking is over.” Picture, if you will, the Bush White House asking Americans to turn in their e-mails in the pursuit of “fishy” dissent.

"Conjure a scenario under which then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott derided critics as “evil-mongers” the way Harry Reid recently described town-hall protesters. Or if then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay had called critics “un-American” the way Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer did last week...

"I am finally scared of a White House administration" By Nat Hentoff :

"I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law. .."

I couldn't do a better job of accentuating the sheer, hack, blind hypocrisy of the left, than Instapunditeer Glenn Reynolds:

JOSH MARSHALL: “Let’s be honest with ourselves: the American right has a deep-seated problem with political violence.”

Glenn: "You mean like the violence against Ken Gladney? A peaceful black guy beaten by thugs who called him the N-word? Who wouldn’t have a problem with that? Oh, wait, I get it . . . .

"ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Walsh writes: “Josh Marshall has apparently forgotten about the assassination attempts on Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. I find it both comical and disturbing that he equates the carrying of a legal gun to a political event with the Oklahoma City bombing. Insanity, not political affiliation, is the common thread among Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme, John Hinckley, Francisco Duran, and Timothy McVeigh.”

"If you’re looking for lefty violence, what about Lee Harvey Oswald, who by any objective measure was far-left? As for the legal carrying of guns, Marshall has — in a rare turn of events — gotten himself out of sync with the White House message. I’m sure he’ll rectify that posthaste.And reader Richard Samuelson writes, “Don’t forget the Black Panthers, who Obama won’t prosecute.”

"During the Bush administration, many within the dominant culture expressed concern about the constitutionality of detaining several hundred alleged enemy combatants in Guantanamo.Whenever legal restrictions on abortion are proposed, many express doubt about the constitutionality of interjecting government between patients and their doctors.But those voices have been mostly silent about the constitutionality of empowering the federal government with decisions over the life, death, and health of three hundred million Americans."

"Why the rush? The way the Democrats are selling health care reform feels a lot like a car dealer desperate to make a sale. The salesman shows you a shiny new model and tells you that you can drive it off the lot today, no money down, and you won't have to pay a penny until sometime in the distant future. What's more, he'll give you a great deal as a trade in on your reliable existing car. But the offer is only good if you make the decision on the spot. And, he doesn't have a copy of the actual contract so that you can read it before signing, but, not to worry, you can trust him.

"Only a fool would buy under those circumstances, but Americans are expected to buy into something even more fundamental in the health care reform the Democrats are selling -- and to do so without a peep of protest.

"I was in Portsmouth on Tuesday broadcasting “On The Air With Jennifer Horn” live from outside President Barack Obama’s town hall at Portsmouth High School. I had a firsthand view of the protests that took place, and there is no question that there is a certain “Astroturf” sensibility to some of these protests.

"But, at least in Portsmouth, it was not the anti-government, health care protest that looked manufactured. With charter buses dropping off crowds of protesters from other states, professionally printed signs and an AFL-CIO banner, it was the smaller group of pro-government health care protesters that had the appearance of corporate organization.

"Since when have we, as a nation, demonized the expression of free speech? For the past few weeks, citizens across the country have been attending the town halls of their elected representatives to express their concerns about the massive redefinition of health care delivery contained in H.R. 3200, and they have been excoriated and attacked for doing so."

The cash for clunkers program I wrote briefly about in a column, pointing to the one positive aspect of putting money directly available to consumers that they then spend...well, its over and can now be evaluated objectively:

"When we talk about government policies destroying wealth, we usually mean taxes that shift money from efficient to inefficient uses. Rarely do we mean the deliberate destruction of valuable assets. Yet, thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program, which ground to a halt yesterday, we now have a visual aid to help with this abstract concept. Mechanics tasked with destroying the so-called clunkers have been posting the videos on YouTube, often muttering in anger as they fill the engines of perfectly good Corvettes and Cadillacs with sodium silicate and then run them until they self-destruct."

"To get a sense of how much value the program has destroyed in its short lifespan, keep an eye on used-car prices, which are expected to skyrocket as dealers see their inventory sacrificed to Washington’s green gods. Look also at the 12 percent decline in used cars donated to charity. This is to say nothing of the extra use their owners could have gotten out of them if the government hadn’t subsidized their destruction. "

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

"Liberals and the CIA; A real 'Plame-gate,' minus the outrage." by Bret Stephens shows the utter, monumental hypocritical double standard over the non-crime, trumpted up "scandal" over the revelation of the non-covert agent Plame and...well just read it:

"Today, liberals within government and without are betraying covert CIA operatives as if it were the very essence of virtue. Consistency, principled or foolish, has never been a hobgoblin of the liberal mind. "Consider Attorney General Eric Holder's decision Monday to investigate and potentially prosecute about a dozen previously closed cases involving alleged detainee abuse by CIA officers or contractors..."What's nearly certain, however, is that the names of the agents will soon become a part of the public record, either directly or through leaks that the liberal press will have no scruple about printing. Last year, for instance, the New York Times published the name of a CIA officer who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This was despite the protests of the officer and the CIA that to identify him would "put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency," as the Times put it in an editor's note.

"So much, then, for President Obama's solemn promises to the CIA troops."

Yes, there are sections in both the House and the Senate versions that makes the IRS the controlling enforcer implementing the mandate for your cooperation and submission to gov't health care:

"Friday, August 14, 2009IRS The New Health Care EnforcerPeople often joke that government-run health care will have the efficiency of the motor vehicle department, and the compassion of the Internal Revenue Service. This joke will become reality if present Democratic health restructuring proposals are enacted.Under both the House and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee bills released to the public, the Internal Revenue Service will play a key role in monitoring and enforcing health care mandates against individual taxpayers. Yet the introduction of the IRS into the health care system has received scant attention....

"I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking," Barack Obama said on a campaign stop in Virginia on Aug. 6. "I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess." When a politician tries to stop debate, it's a sign he's losing the argument."

""I will never shop there again," vowed Joshua, a 45-year-old blogger, who asked that his last name not be published. Like many of his fellow health food fanatics, Joshua said he will no longer patronize the store after learning about Whole Foods Market Inc.'s CEO John Mackey's views on health care reform, which were made public this week in an op-ed piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal. ..."

‘06 Flashback: Pelosi Tells Anti-War Protesters ‘I’m a Fan of Disruptors’"January 17, 2006: "So I thank all of you who have spoken out for your courage, your point of view. All of it. Your advocacy is very American and very important."

"“An African-American man from Mississippi admits posing as a white supremacist to send a death threat across state lines by Facebook. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says 20-year-old Dyron L. Hart of Poplarville pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to making a threat in November 2008. Hart admitted creating a name and using a white supremacists’ photo to pose as a white man who planned to kill blacks because Barack Obama had been elected president.”

" Ask them about it, and many Democrats will point to the continued personal popularity of Barack Obama. But that's not the story. "I think what's going to happen is Obama's going to be fine, and the Democrats in Congress are going to get their asses kicked in 2010," says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named. "This is following a curve like the Clinton years: take on really controversial things early, fail, or succeed partially, ask Democrats to take really tough votes, and then lose...

I'm thinking of the line about putting "a few more in the ground"...Don't forget one of the best lines, ever, in a country music song by Hank Williams, Jr, about hearing about his friend that got killed by a "man with a switchblade knife...for $45 my friend lost his life...I'd love to spit some Beechnut in that dude's eye...and shoot him with my ol' 45...A country boy can survive, a country boy can survive.

They strode into the restaurant supply store in Harlem shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday, four young men intent on robbery, one with a Glock 9-millimeter pistol, the police said. The place may have looked like an easy mark, a high-cash business with an owner in his 70s, known as a gentle, soft-spoken man. . . . The first shot took down the gunman at the front. He died almost immediately, according to the police, who said he was 29 and had been arrested for gun possession in Queens last year and was the nephew of a police officer. Mr. Augusto’s other two blasts hit all three accomplices, who stumbled out the door, bleeding. . . .

Saturday, August 22, 2009

1. Millions Will Lose Their Current Insurance...2. Your Health Care Coverage Will Probably Change Anyway...3. The Umpire Is Also the First Baseman...4. The Fed Picks Your Treatment...5. Individual Mandate Means Less Liberty and More Taxes...6. Higher Taxes Than Europe Hurt Small Businesses...7. Who Makes Medical Decisions?8. Taxpayer-Funded Abortions?9. It’s Not Paid For...10. Rushing It, Not Reading It

"Obama today: "I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter because frankly we historically have had a employer-based system in this country, that's private insurers."Obama in 2003: "I happen to be a proponent of single-payer, universal health care plan."

"Here's Obama in 2007:"My commitment is to make sure that we've got universal health care for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. I would hope that we can set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort, but I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be potentially some transition process. I can envision a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out.

"And here he is again in 2003:

" And that's what Jim's talking about when he says, "Everybody in, nobody out," a single payer health care plan, universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see..."

Liveblogged from WSJ - "Fifth question “from a Republican so I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Question on a universal health care plan, and that if you create a public option, whether it will lead to an entirely government run system. Obama says there’s a difference between a “universal” plan and a “single-payer” plan.

"Obama says the private industry can compete against the government. “They do it all the time,” he says. “If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

This is classic. 1. the post office has a monopoly on first class mail. there is NO competition. 2. they lose gobs and gobs of money and are only kept around because they have a big union and a government balance sheet (our grandkids) to offset those mega-losses. 3. they are able to compete against Fedex and UPS because they can afford to operate at mega-losses.

" Another e-mail:

" I used to work for UPS in the Competitive Analysis function and we studied the USPS. We spent a great deal of time determining if the USPS used that First Class Mail monopoly in order to improperly subsidize their small package business which competes directly against UPS and FedEx. We constantly had to push back in Congressional and Postal Regulatory Commission testimony to more accurately allocate their costs to show the true nature of their operating costs.

"Point 2 is interesting in that UPS also is highly unionized (FedEx is not unionized). Historically, UPS also has the highest profit margins in the transportation industry and is highly profitable. In the most recent quarter, the USPS lost $2.4 billion from operations (source) while UPS earned $0.9 billion from operations (source)."

It's just that...they're Canadian doctors, THE CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, stating what the rest of us find to be obvious:

"Before Americans adopt Canadian-style health care regulations, we might want to ask Canadian doctors what they think of their system. The Canadian Medical Association gathered for its annual meeting on Sunday. Warnings from doctors to our north are important to dispel the Obama administration's claim that its government takeover is a way to get costs under control.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize. We know that there must be change," said Dr. Anne Doig, the Canadian Medical Association's incoming president, in an interview with the Canadian Press. "[Canadians] have to understand that the system that we have right now -- if it keeps on going without change -- is not sustainable."

Friday, August 21, 2009

"Clashes keep breaking out at the "town hall" meetings devoted to discussing health care reform. Usually the excitement amounts to some angry questions and heckling, but sometimes there's more..."

1. It isn't Astroturf after the grassroots show up...2. It isn't unprecedented if there are obvious precedents...3. It isn't fascism if...actually, you can stop there. IT ISN'T FASCISM, you numbskulls...

L.A. Times: Wanted: Obama healthcare reform volunteers willing to be paid $15 an hour. “It seems that, despite all the media attention lavished on e-mail appeals to his supporters, not everyone pushing for President Obama’s embattled healthcare reform plan these warm August days is an idealistic volunteer in it for the sake of helping move the country forward and gaining medical attention for millions of uninsured Americans. . . . It’s a web ad on Craigslist: ‘You can work for change. Join motivated staff around the country working to make change happen. You can make great friends and money along the way. Earn $400-$600 a week.’”

“The elderly consume 70% of all health care spending. That means that when it comes to cost control, they will bear the brunt of the burden. If we don’t cut spending on the elderly we can’t reduce cost without simply denying care for everyone else. When it comes down to choice between spending on old people and children, the elderly know full well who we are going to pick.”Read the whole article:http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/8627.html

"But the 1,017-page bill making its way through the House devotes all of six pages to insurance reform -- 30 pages, if you count all the definitions and supporting provisions, still less than 3 percent of the bill. So why the bait and switch? Well, one reason might be that Obama realizes that these insurance reforms aren't all they are cracked up to be...

"After all, prohibiting insurers from charging more to older and sicker customers amounts to a tax on the young and healthy who must pay higher premiums to subsidize their less-healthy counterparts. And letting people buy insurance after they get sick means healthy people have little incentive to buy insurance.

"Put the two together and, as the Congressional Budget Office has warned, the young and healthy are much more likely to simply do without insurance.As the healthy leave the insurance pool, the proportion of sick in the pool grows ever greater, leading to higher premiums -- which in turn causes the healthiest remaining individuals to leave in what amounts to an insurance death spiral."

"Robert Wright notes that “we already ration health care; we just let the market do the rationing.” This is a true point made by the proponents of health care reform. But I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be so interesting. You could make this statement about any good:

“We already ration food; we just let the market do the rationing.”“We already ration gasoline; we just let the market do the rationing.”“We already ration cigarettes; we just let the market do the rationing.”

"And indeed, this was an argument that was made in favor of socialism. (No, okay, I’m not calling you socialists!) And yet, most of us realize that there are huge differences between price rationing and government rationing, and that the latter is usually much worse for everyone. This is one of the things that most puzzles me about the health care debate: statements that would strike almost anyone as stupid in the context of any other good suddenly become dazzling insights when they’re applied to hip replacements and otitis media.

"The House bill would increase the budget deficit by $239 B over the next ten years. This conflicts with the President’s goal of not increasing short-term deficits.

"Ten years from now the House bill would add $65 B to the budget deficit. This conflicts with the President’s insistence that legislation must not increase the deficit in that year.

"The House bill would increase long-term budget deficits by ever-increasing amounts, making our long-term debt problem worse than under current law. This of course conflicts with the President’s statements that “health care reform is entitlement reform,” and that health care reform is essential to addressing America’s long-term budget problems.

"Rather than “bending the cost curve down” as the President has laudably insisted, Dr. Elmendorf said the Senate HELP Committee bill would “raise the cost curve.”

"Under the House bill, in the year 2015 about 8 million uninsured Americans would remain uninsured and pay higher taxes. This would violate the President’s pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 per year.

"Under the House bill, about 3 million people who now have employer-sponsored health insurance would lose that coverage because their employer drops it, violating the President’s bold promise that no one will lose the health plan they have now."

"When it comes to health care decisions, 51% of the nation’s voters fear the federal government more than private insurance companies. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% hold the opposite view and fear the insurance companies more...

"If Obama has his way, his health care plan will be funded by his treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by his surgeon general who is obese, signed by a president who smokes, and financed by a country that is just about broke."

"These battle-cries were heard often, in a simpler America of long ago -- that is, before last November. Back then, protests -- even if they were organized by the usual leftist apparatchik-groups like ANSWER or ACORN -- were seen - at least in the media - as proof of popular discontent.

"When handfuls of Code Pink ladies disrupted congressional hearings or speeches by Bushadministration officials, it was taken as evidence that the administration's policies were unpopular, and that the thinking parts of the populace were rising up in true democratic fashion...

"Remember: When lefties do it, it's called "community organizing." When conservatives and libertarians do it, it's "astroturf."But some people are noticing the truth. As Mickey Kaus notes, "If an 'astroturfing' campaign gets real people to show up at events stating their real views, isn't it ... community organizing?" Why yes, yes it is.

"As someone who's been following the Tea Party campaign since the beginning, it seems to me to be the most genuine outbreak of grassroots popular involvement in my lifetime. People have been turning out, in the tens of thousands at times, because they feel that Obama pulled a bait-and-switch and is moving the country much farther to the left than he promised during the campaign..."

From Burton Folsom via NRO: "What do we make of the latest job numbers? The unemployment rate dropped from 9.5 percent in June to 9.4 percent in July — the first monthly drop during the Obama presidency. Supporters of the administration will crow that their spending programs may at last be taking hold; critics will cite the overall unemployment jump from roughly 8 percent to 9.4 percent during 2009.

"Two points need to be made. First, unemployment numbers fluctuate from month to month. During FDR’s reign, for example, unemployment dropped from 18.7 percent in January 1936 (an election year) to 18.0 percent in February. It was 16 percent in July and 14 percent in November, when voters stampeded to the ballot box to give FDR a triumphant reelection, carrying 46 out of 48 states. But what happened later?

"In January 1939, unemployment was back up to 18.7 percent; it rose to 19.3 percent in February and 20.7 percent in April. The next month, Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of treasury, announced, “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” The so-called job creation of 1936 was a mirage. Massive government spending did not — and could not — create jobs or prosperity in the long run.

"Second, even if unemployment does start to decline steadily this year, the larger point is that the growth of government means a lessening of individual liberty. You have less control of your life, and bureaucrats have more."

"France claims it long ago achieved much of what today's U.S. health-care overhaul is seeking: It covers everyone, and provides what supporters say is high-quality care. But soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. The result: As Congress fights over whether America should be more like France, the French government is trying to borrow U.S. tactics.

"In recent months, France imposed American-style "co-pays" on patients to try to throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses. "A hospital doesn't need to be money-losing to provide good-quality treatment," President Nicolas Sarkozy thundered in a recent speech to doctors...

" And service cuts — such as the closure of a maternity ward near Ms. Cuccarolo's home — are prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being rationed. That concern echos worries among some Americans that the U.S. changes could lead to rationing.

"The French system's fragile solvency shows how tough it is to provide universal coverage while controlling costs, the professed twin goals of President Barack Obama's proposed overhaul."

"There are two basic points about health-care reform that President Obama wants to convey. The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, "the status quo is untenable." Our health-care system is rife with "skewed incentives." It gives us "a whole bunch of care" that "may not be making us healthier." It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is "bankrupting families," "bankrupting businesses" and "bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change."

"Obama's second major point is that—to quote from the same broadcast—"if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don't want you to have to change ... So what we're saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it."So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health-care reform to the public has been so hard?"

From NRO's MKH: "Yesterday, at a rally for R. Creigh Deeds in Virginia, President Obama said: "I don't want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking.""For Barack Obama, democracy appears to be a distraction. He really does seem to view himself as a Caesar..."

From the DC Examiner: "They aren't carrying swastikas, either, contrary to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's rant about the legions of worried citizens who have been standing up in multiple town halls and congressional forums to demand straight answers from their congressmen about what they are doing under the guise of "health-care reform." Pelosi's attempt to smear honest citizens as Nazis is only the most reprehensible manifestation of a White House-directed propaganda campaign to discredit anyone who disagrees with President Obama's health-care proposal. A growing list of major national surveys suggests that the people targeted by the campaign represent a clear majority of Americans, if not something very close to it. And they are being portrayed by some in their government as its enemy.

"The Obama White House has established a health care reform snitch line and encouraged its supporters to turn in critics for allegedly spreading false information about Obamacare. In its effort to intimidate and silence dissenter, the administration is also working hand-in-hand with the Democratic congressional leadership, the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America (formerly the 2008 Obama campaign committee), friendly journalists in the liberal media, tax-exempt supposedly non-partisan non-profits like AARP, and the AFL-CIO, SEIU, and other labor unions. This campaign is creating the spectacle of Democratic congressmen being shielded from constituents by squads of union goons.

"We are witnessing something terribly ugly in America this summer. Obama is leading a campaign to shift our peaceful democratic process away from civil discussions of programs and candidates to using the power of the state to bully those who oppose the majority party's policy proposals...

"A number of people in the news analysis business seem to be equating the role of liberal activists in making trouble for Republicans back in 2005, during the debate over Social Security privatization, with that of conservative activists in making trouble for Democrats over health care reform. [...] Seriously, I’ve been searching through news reports on the Social Security town halls, and I can’t find any examples of the kind of behavior we’re seeing now..."

Au contraire: "Reality:

NW Progressive Institute, March 2005: "a boisterous crowd which frequently interrupted the discussion with shouts and hard nosed questions. ... Democrats in the audience who were interrupting the panel.... the crowd erupted in anger... Democrats in the audience started shouting him down again."

"Perusing the Democrats’ proposal to usurp the health-care industry, one-sixth of what used to be known as the private sector, that history rushes back to mind. Pardon me if I can’t help thinking: This sure looks an awful lot like a legal black hole.#adOne might have thought we’d run out of blank checks for Barack Obama by now.

"But if “our values” really include judicial oversight, then Obamacare doesn’t have much to do with our values. And this time, the people being stripped of their basic legal rights are not America-hating terrorists. To borrow the left’s nightmare rhetoric, Obamacare is Gitmo for all Americans.

"Tucked into several pages of this epic monstrosity (H.R. 3200 is here—if you can get it to load) are various “limitation on review” provisions. They are designed to vest President Obama with unilateral, non-appealable control over available treatments and their costs. That is, Americans will have no recourse to challenge errant or capricious executive-branch decisions in the courts."

"The current “health care” bill threatens to take life-and-death decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors, transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats. People are taking that personally — as they should. Your life and death, and that of your loved ones, is as personal as it gets...

"The mainstream media are again circling the wagons to protect Barack Obama, but this time it may not work. One of those front-page editorials disguised as a news article in the New York Times begins: “The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored ‘death panels’ to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks.”

"Nowhere? Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is “Special Advisor for Health Policy” for the Obama administration. That’s nowhere? He is also co-author of an article on Americans’ “over-utilization” of medical care in the June 18, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Is that nowhere?...

"As for a “death panel,” no politician would ever use that phrase when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. “End of life” care under the “guidance” of “some independent group” sounds so much nicer — and these are the terms President Obama used in an interview with the New York Times back on April 14th."

Here's a YouTube that is brilliantly assembled to show, in just 3 minutes, how the rhetoric from the various players and O-bot mouthpieces that happily admit to the charade going on that the "public option" is to give you choices and competition. It's designed to do no such thing--only be a trojan, or, as the man flat-out admitted, a plain in-the-open horse to bring about single-payer:

Victor Davis Hansen just nails the new liberal overlords and their shameless hypocrisy:

"The cap-and-trade prone Congress ordering up brand new Gulfstream luxury jets is the sort of thing that is contributing to this growing backlash against expanding government.Besides all the other worries, the public is finally starting to fathom the nature of our new technocratic government overseers.

"A Pelosi who rails about carbon footprints, but wants the biggest private-use jet she can get; "pay your fair share" Dodd and Rangel, who skip out on their own taxes, and find all sorts of immoral ways to finance and maintain second and third properties; a Geithner or Daschle who favor more taxes and less perks for the elite — if they can avoid taxes, or have tax-free limo service; the millionaire Gore who earned a lavish lifestyle by warning of its pernicious effects in others..."

"On the administration’s reaction to protesters at health-care town halls:

"Well, the White House accuses it of being orchestrated. Orchestrated is a synonym for organized. And I thought that community organizing was a high calling. I mean, our president — he used to deploy it every day when he was a campaigner as a sign of his altruism.

"This is unbelievable hypocrisy, and it's because the administration has a hard time defending itself on the merits of the case. The support for health-care reform is sinking, and that's because…as you look, as you unpack what is happening here and what's in the bill, it is a monstrosity...

"The administration has made a turn in the PR and you can see it in an op-ed that the secretary of Health and Human Services had earlier this week with the Post — the Washington Post — in which she mentioned the uninsured in paragraph one, and then you never heard about them again.

"It was all about the insured and keeping [your health insurance] and having it, and making the insurance companies have you keep it. The reason that they [the Democrats] have shifted is because that's how you sell it.

"But the problem is: That's not what's in the bills! The bills being discussed in the town halls, and the bills that have been out there for weeks, and the bills that have been drafted and you can read, have all this other stuff in there — the mandates and the huge deficits and the new-age nonsense of wellness and other stuff that everybody is rejecting. That's what they're stuck with right now."

I've read this before but here is the gist of the research showing that neither the top 1%, nor the top 5%, nor even all those making over $160,000 could be taxed sufficiently to pay for these deficits and programs:

From Cesar Conda at NRO: "supply-side economist Dr. Richard W. Rahn, my old boss from my days at the U.S. Chamber in the 1980s, does a much better job of debunking this fraudulent notion that only taxing the wealthy can take care of Obama's spending and deficit-cutting promises:

"The Congressional Budget Office projects a total additional deficit of approximately $4.9 trillion dollars during President Obama's first term (2009-2012). Currently, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of the tax, or $450 billion a year, or approximately $1.8 trillion dollars during the next four years, leaving a $3.1 trillion hole. Increasing the tax rate on those high earners to 100 percent might yield an additional $1.5 trillion the first year, but this will only work for the first year. Most people, after being taxed 100 percent on their income, will quit work and/or put their investments in nontaxable entities, such as tax-free local government bonds...

"It is also not mathematically possible to take care of all the new spending by increasing taxes on the top 5 percent of taxpayers (those making $160,000 or more annually) who already pay 61 percent of the federal tax (or $676 billion per year)...

"Quite simply, upper-income people have options. History shows that when tax rates are raised, many will choose to work less (leisure is nontaxable), retire earlier than they had planned and save and invest less in taxable, productive activities. Those making more than $160,000 per year would need to have their taxes roughly tripled to take care of just this year's deficit."

— Cesar Conda is a former policy advisor to Vice President Cheney and Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign.

Michelle Malkin has a small roundup of videos of leftwing mob rule, just to make sure there's no doubt what the not-so-nonviolent left has done in the name of protest:

"Allahpundit reports tonight that the DNC is now decrying “mob rule.” Lefty bloggers are comparing grass-roots conservatives to Holocaust deniers and waving around the moral equivalence card to smear peaceful Tea Party activists as dangers to democracy and civility (check that link and you’ll get a chuckle out of Media Matters pointing to my archive exposing anti-war fraudsters, Code Pink thieves and home stalkers, and rock-throwing moonbats as some sort of proof that supporting the law-abiding Tea Party movement is hypocritical)."

“When you consider that Barbara Boxer considers Code Pink and MoveOn.org protestors to be ‘her base,’ it’s understandable that a Senator representing the left wing fringe would be confused when ordinary Americans engage in free speech. But the fact of the matter is that across the country, Americans of all backgrounds are standing up and saying ‘no’ to the Democrats spending and health-care takeover proposals.”

Here's a brilliant take-down, by Charles Krauthammer, of the shamelessness of Obama and his folks criticizing anti-health care bill protesters:

"There is a certain irony in an administration denouncing ordinary Americans who get together to express what they believe and to confront authority, when that administration is led by a man who began his career as a community organizer, whose job, as I understand it, is to take ordinary Americans, get them together to express what they believe, and express demands against the authorities.

"So it's unbelievably hypocritical. And, of course, as we just heard, this only happens when you have a conservative protest. It is called a mob. If it’s a liberal protest, it is called grassroots expressing themselves.

"Remember, just a year ago under the Bush administration, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. And today it is a kind of either organized anger, it's a facsimile of anger, it's unpatriotic, it's whatever.

"Look, there is a genuine revolt against the idea of remaking a [health-care] system when over 80 percent of Americans have health insurance. Five of six of those are happy with their health care, and four of five are happy with their health insurance."

In yet another blatant example of double-standards, here's a NRO piece about all the kook fringe conspiracies fomented for 8 years of Bush, that never drew any riducule, let alone hard questions of Dem's as to whether they believed the nonsense (9/11 truthers being a prime example):

"One point I'd emphasize is the continuing amnesia of liberals when it comes to their own paranoia and/or their tacit support of it. Here's Robinson:If there has been a more clinically insane political phenomenon in my lifetime than the "birthers," I've missed it. Is this what our national discourse has come to? Sheer paranoid fantasy?

"Really? Did Robinson miss the 9/11 truthers? This was the movement that insisted the U.S. government was in on, or even orchestrated, the 9/11 attacks. Such theories went from the simply nutty to full-on whackjob bonkers. Some, like former DNC Chair and then-presidential candidate Howard Dean simply entertained the "theory" that Bush was "tipped off" by the Saudis but let 9/11 happen anyway. Some, like Rosy O'Donnell argued that the conspiracy was so advanced that the inside job was “the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel.”...

" There was also Michael Moore who insisted that Bush knew where Osama Bin Laden was but the president was simply keeping him on ice (Moore also believed OJ was innocent, for the record). The vast bulk of the left agreed with the Moore vision that Bush always knew there were no WMDs but "lied us into war" for ulterior motives. ..

"Oh and let's not forget all of the nonsense during, and in the wake of, Hurricane Katrina when several prominent figures made all sorts of crazy statements. Randall Robinson said that blacks — and only blacks — were eating the flesh of the dead almost immediately after the flooding. Spike Lee and others insisted that the levees might have been bombed by the Bush administration in order to kill or scatter black residents of New Orleans. Cynthia McKinney says the American forces rounded up and executed 5,000 "prisoners" and dumped in the swamps of Louisiana."

"THE WHITE HOUSE SAYS IT’S NOT CONCERNED ABOUT HEALTH CARE PROTESTS. They’re so unconcerned that they’re dispatching surrogates to claim the protests are fake.For a graphic illustration of the difference between real and contrived protests, see this. Meanwhile, how’s all that “post-partisan” hope-and-change talk going to play into a strategy to call your opponents dumb rednecks who are pawns of Satan insurance companies? Can they do this without hurting their own credibility?

UPDATE: They’re not worried about the protests, but they’re looking for snitches...."From the White House internet page: "There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Michelle Malkin assembles a very small photographic reminder of the thinly veiled advocacy of violence towards then-Pres. Bush, that makes the tiny-by-comparison depictions of Obama pale (no pun intended) by comparison.

Howard Kurtz: "“With the flap over the Cash for Clunkers program, the media-political establishment is questioning whether the president’s health-care plan is a clunker as well. The opposition — including a very screechy woman who confronted Kathleen Sebelius at a town hall meeting — is asking how the administration can remake one-sixth of the economy if it can’t handle a used-car program. . . . I may be in the minority, but how can the administration declare the clunkers program a success when a billion-dollar effort that was supposed to last till November ran out of money in five days? Isn’t that a pretty spectacular miscalculation?”

"Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18% this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion. Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession's impact:

"Individual income tax receipts are down 22% from a year ago.Corporate income taxes are down 57%.Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.

" Several decades ago, I spent a couple seasons working for the Soviets as a Russian translator—...

"What I found was so much propaganda about the wonders of Soviet Socialist Mankind and the horrors of Western Democracy that the people exposed to it might as well have had electrodes implanted to control their thoughts. There were no governmental checks and balances and nothing even close to a free press—so positions of power were filled by nasty sorts who kept good people in fear for their lives if they didn’t think the right thoughts. Soviet Socialism, as it turned out, was a perverse system that killed motivation even as it made fear as natural as breathing.

"Why wasn’t this widely reported in the Western press?As it turns out, the preponderance ofjournalistsareDemocrats. And socialism, with its idyllic, “progressive” programs, has formed an increasingly important role in Democratic policies. Who wants to investigate a possible dark side of your own party’s plank?We’ll get to that. First—why are most journalists Democrats?Unsurprisingly, self-selectionplaysan important role in choosing a job...."

About Me

pole'cat n. 1. creature of fierce, brave, fearless heart willing to go against opponents at a moments notice. 2. nickname of one Don Polson in grade school in Heyworth, Illinois, frequently used in a game of "red rover," as in "red rover, red rover, let polecat come over" upon which said polecat flung himself into the opposing line with abandon.
I'm happy to provide you with some of the best conservative stuff (and non-conservative stuff that, nonetheless, helps inform and illumine) I can find on the web. Oldest posts are at the end--enjoy and learn something.